Department of Psychology, University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, FL 33701, USA.
J Consult Clin Psychol. 2010 Jun;78(3):287-97. doi: 10.1037/a0019294.
In 2005, the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology (JCCP) became the first American Psychological Association (APA) journal to require statistical measures of clinical significance, plus effect sizes (ESs) and associated confidence intervals (CIs), for primary outcomes (La Greca, 2005). As this represents the single largest editorial effort to improve statistical reporting practices in any APA journal in at least a decade, in this article we investigate the efficacy of that change.
All intervention studies published in JCCP in 2003, 2004, 2007, and 2008 were reviewed. Each article was coded for method of clinical significance, type of ES, and type of associated CI, broken down by statistical test (F, t, chi-square, r/R(2), and multivariate modeling).
By 2008, clinical significance compliance was 75% (up from 31%), with 94% of studies reporting some measure of ES (reporting improved for individual statistical tests ranging from eta(2) = .05 to .17, with reasonable CIs). Reporting of CIs for ESs also improved, although only to 40%. Also, the vast majority of reported CIs used approximations, which become progressively less accurate for smaller sample sizes and larger ESs (cf. Algina & Kessleman, 2003).
Changes are near asymptote for ESs and clinical significance, but CIs lag behind. As CIs for ESs are required for primary outcomes, we show how to compute CIs for the vast majority of ESs reported in JCCP, with an example of how to use CIs for ESs as a method to assess clinical significance.
2005 年，《咨询与临床心理学杂志》（JCCP）成为美国心理协会（APA）第一本要求对主要结果进行临床意义的统计测量，同时还需要效应量（ES）和相关置信区间（CI）的期刊（La Greca，2005）。由于这代表了至少十年来 APA 期刊中提高统计报告实践的最大单一编辑努力，因此在本文中，我们调查了这一变化的效果。
回顾了 2003 年、2004 年、2007 年和 2008 年发表在 JCCP 上的所有干预研究。根据临床意义的方法、ES 的类型以及相关 CI 的类型，对每篇文章进行编码，分为统计检验（F、t、卡方、r/R(2)和多元建模）。
到 2008 年，临床意义的合规率为 75%（从 31%上升），94%的研究报告了某种 ES 测量（对于从 eta(2) =.05 到.17 的个体统计检验，报告有所改善，并且 CI 合理）。ES 报告的 CI 也有所改善，尽管仅达到 40%。此外，报告的绝大多数 CI 使用了近似值，对于较小的样本量和较大的 ES，这些近似值的准确性会逐渐降低（比较 Algina 和 Kessleman，2003）。
ES 和临床意义的变化接近渐近线，但 CI 落后。由于 ES 的 CI 是主要结果的要求，我们展示了如何为 JCCP 中报告的绝大多数 ES 计算 CI，以及如何使用 ES 的 CI 作为评估临床意义的方法的示例。
